


t'es beau x the blue glass

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Series: t'es beau [3]
Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Cheating, Drama, Excessive Drinking, Hand Jobs, JoMax, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, RPF, Recreational Drug Use, maxel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:03:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21550042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: When he can speak again, he calls his sister. “I’ve blown it up,” he says. The lightheartedness has taken, finally: he’s his old bouncy self, and he sounds almost gleeful. He could be delivering good news.I have a new project. I have a new shoot. Guess what, I’m getting dinner with Axel.“Everything. The show. My career.”“Maxence,” she says, hushed, “what did youdo?”“Axel,” he whispers. “I slept with Axel.”At his mother’s, he can’t eat; he shreds bits of chicken between his fingers and feeds them to Ouba beneath the table.“You’re quiet,chéri,” his mother says. “Is something wrong?”“Just tired,” he says, “it’s a lot of travel, shuttling back and forth like this,” and then he sets down his fork and says, “Maman, I think…I think Maxence is in love with me.”Twice the pining and twice the fun—here'st'es beauandthe blue glasscombined in one document.
Relationships: Axel Auriant-Blot/Original Female Character, Axel Auriant/Maxence Danet-Fauvel
Series: t'es beau [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1435933
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18





	t'es beau x the blue glass

**Author's Note:**

> Things I do on lazy Sundays instead of creating new content. [FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite) combined “t’es beau” and “the blue glass” into a single Word document, to be read together, and the end result is lovely. It’s like a whole new story!
> 
> I intended for “the blue glass” to be read together with (and after) “t’es beau”—to fill in the narrative gaps, to hold up a <strike>blue</strike> glass to Maxence's pining and reveal that the feelings are indeed very mutual. I wrote it with "t'es beau" open in another window, and I followed "t'es beau" paragraph by paragraph. Maybe Axel's story suffers for it—maybe "the blue glass" feels thinner, because, after all, it was written to build on "t'es beau"; it wasn't really meant to stand alone.
> 
> In any case, here they are together, side by side. 
> 
> HTML tables are hell.

_And I need you to know_  
_My heart ain't made of stone_  
_My heart ain't made… _

—Mini Mansions, “[Heart of Stone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiPAmNdfr1M)”

|  | 

_Ah, honey_  
_I saw the future there in the blue glass_  
_ You and me together in the green grass _

—The Lonely Biscuits, “[The Blue Glass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjLNtnnTpnY)”  
  
---|---|---  
  
_I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on, and TAKE IT!_

—Janis Joplin, "[Piece of My Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0f5ZG9LG6k)"

|  |   
  
It’s J.F. who first tells him, aloud, what his sister and friends and exes have been trying to say with their eyes and their gestures, J.F., lying almost naked beside him in the sand in Biarritz.

“Enough,” J.F. says. At first, Maxence thinks J.F. is trying to toast him, to knock their bottles together companionably, but then J.F. nudges the bottle from his mouth altogether and repeats, “enough,” and, “you know you could have anyone you wanted.”

“Anyone?” he says.

He brings the bottle back to his lips and drinks and knows that the condensation is dripping and sliding down his fingers, over his knuckles, and that J.F. counts himself among _anyone_, and that he could and has had J.F. for the taking, and that his gaze has a dark magic in it. And he knows also that he is powerless, because Axel walks beneath his stare like an idiot strolling in the shadow of a volcano, barefoot and gorgeous and blissfully ignorant while the mountain smolders and sputters overhead.

He rolls onto his back and feels the sand rubbing the raw skin stretched over his shoulder blades, opening himself up to the sky. The light shines red through the lids of his closed eyes. Floating in the glow, he listens to the steady washing of the sea, the rising tide, and envisions the molten center of his body flowing down to meet it, hardening into stone at water’s edge and releasing all sorts of toxic effluvia: jagged glass and hydrochloric steam. 

“Anyone,” J.F. insists; he presses Maxence’s thigh with the same insistence, and his hand is large enough to span it, to dig into both sides of the quadricep.

J.F. likes beautiful people, but Maxence thinks if he keeps this up, he won’t be beautiful anymore; he’ll look as haggard as he feels. And then, he thinks, paradoxically, Axel will come to love him after all, that pity will transform into desire.

“Not anyone,” he jokes. “Not your mother, for instance.”

J.F. makes a noncommittal sound, and they laugh, and the subject is closed. A day later he joins up with other friends for the road trip: from Biarritz to Bordeaux, Bordeaux to Bilbao. When it’s his turn to drive, he imagines that the car is a classic convertible, that Axel is holding his hand over the gearbox, and that his hair is long again and the wind is gusting through it. They’re listening to the Barbara song Axel likes, and it’s growing on him.

In reality, he’s wearing a bucket hat over his shorn sunburned skull, and the roof of the car is so low that his hat bumps against it when they roll over potholes, and Thibault, in the passenger’s seat, rests his feet on the dash and plays “Heart in a Cage” until Maxence loses all sense of the passage of time and Sandra howls from the back seat that she’s going to kick Thibault onto the road and watch him tumble in the dust.

When his shift at the wheel ends, he curls up in the back and dreams vividly about Biarritz, the black ocean water at two in the morning and J.F.’s long thin shadow as he plunged naked into the waves, and wakes up drooling onto Sandra’s shoulder.

“You okay?” she says. He pretends not to hear.

He watches Axel’s Calvin Klein ad in the foothills of Bilbao, among the tough grasses and boiling sky, and wonders who taught him to spin around like that, to turn and pierce the camera with his eyes. Then he wonders if Axel learned it from _him_, from watching _his_ videos, from studying _him_, and that faint thread of hope winds around his fingers and leads him to comment, _You’re beautiful!_ Just in case. But Axel doesn’t respond.

“Dude,” Thibault complains. “We came here to get unplugged, didn’t we? Come on.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, tucking his phone away. At night they count the stars and marvel at the lilac mantle of light pollution from the city. Maxence smokes until he loses control of his hands. He thinks about checking his phone again, but he can’t even lift his arms. He lies there giggling, wedged between the bodies of his friends.

Sandra gets as high as sixty and forgets what comes next. She snorts with laughter and starts over.

I’ll live like this, Maxence thinks, stay here forever, never think again. |  |   
  
At Lolla Paris, he has a fling with another model, Jasmine from Corsica, J.F.’s friend of a friend of a friend who filmed them cannonballing into the Mediterranean. She seems to be on the same summer festival circuit: he’s noticed her twice before, tall and sylph-like, dancing hypnotically near the DJ booth, so close to the speakers her eardrums must be on the verge of rupturing. In June she had black hair, then red; when they kiss, sometime in the middle of the night on 21 July, she’s gone platinum. In the morning, with her hair shining silver on the pillow, she tells him she’s deaf in one ear. She asks him if he wants to go to Sziget in August, and he turns her down.

“I really liked you in that show,” Jasmine says. “That _SKAM _show. You’re totally different in real life, it’s crazy. You’re so into him on screen it makes me feel like I’m intruding. It makes my heart flutter, I’ll be honest. You make me want to get into acting…I even mentioned it to my agent…”

|  | 

Somewhere between Biarritz and Calvi, Maxence Danet Fauvel throws himself into the Mediterranean. He curls up gently around his knees and plunges soundlessly into deep blue water.

Axel’s watched the video at least seven times, maybe ten. Maybe more. He’s watched all the other Instagram stories before that, too, the ones of Maxence flopping across an inflatable mattress in the middle of a field, of Maxence bouncing around in a neon green wig, Maxence licking a street sign at four in the morning, Maxence grinning at the voice of J.F. Grimaud, who was invisible and laughing behind the camera.  
  
“You should go for it,” he says. He feigns sleep, then falls asleep for real.

Jasmine is gone by the time he crawls out of bed; she doesn’t leave a number. He tries to get it from J.F., who laughs and invites him out for a drink, which turns into two drinks, then five.

He passes the remainder of the month like this, listening to music with his eyes shut, drinking and smoking until he’s seeing double.

|  | 

It unsettled him, the cliff jump. He isn’t sure why. He’s not a daredevil, but he’s not soft, either; you can’t be soft, scootering around Paris. All the same, he watched the jump again and again, as though to desensitize himself, hissing between his teeth.  
  
He doesn’t see Axel again until a meeting at France TV headquarters. Most of the focus is on Robin, who emerges from his tête-à-tête with the execs looking flustered but pleased.  |  | 

And now, as though someone plucked him from the screen mid-air and dropped him into Axel’s reality, here’s Maxence, back from the festival circuit, back in Paris for just a little while.  
  
|  | 

Against the sterile backdrop of France TV headquarters, he’s just as golden as he was on camera and equally un-serene. He’s giggling wildly as he bends and pretends to dive into the water.

“But no,” Coline is saying, “but no, you idiot, that’s how you break your neck.”

“But Coline, it was very deep,” Maxence says.

“But the rocks!”

He’s barely glanced at Axel this entire time. They smiled at each other once across the table as lunch was served, a private joke at David’s expense. Axel raised both eyebrows as if to say, _Can you believe he just said that?_ And Maxence seemed to shrug his shoulders.

Coline is still exclaiming about rocks. Maxence doubles over. He puts his hand on Coline’s shoulder, squeezes.  
  
  
  
  
  
Maxence chats with Coline, hearing more about her vacation in the Pyrenees and reliving the terror of his cliff-diving in Corsica, and then he notices that she’s smiling and waving goodbye and whirls around to see Axel slipping away. He mumbles an excuse and hurries after him. |  | 

Axel checks his phone without really looking; he wants a pretext, an excuse. He even gives a convincing little jump, as though he’s only just noticing the time. They don’t need him anymore, anyway; it’s all Robin’s show now.

Coline waves as he goes. Maxence doesn’t even turn.  
  
|  | 

_Where to? _Axel asks himself, hesitating over the call button. The sun is sparkling on the tile, turning red on the edges of the false potted tree in the window. The whole afternoon is ahead. He feels disappointed, strangely breathless, almost hollow: he inhales as deeply as he can to fill himself up, swelling his lungs.

He’ll be early to dinner with his mother, he decides; he’ll take Ouba for a walk. It’ll be hot, they’ll have to stop by the fountain in the park…

Maxence appears beside him in the elevator bank, as abruptly as Eliott by the vending machine. He’s a little stooped, his hands in his pockets.  
  
“Oh,” Axel says, as Maxence sidles up, _oh_ and nothing else. His smile feels rusted and creaky; he offers it anyway.

|  | 

“Oh,” he says, surprised, and Maxence smiles at him.  
  
They ride the glass elevator down together.  
  


“You’ve had a busy summer,” Axel says.

|  | The elevator arrives: a smooth upward motion crowned by a bright chime. Axel has the distinct sensation of things sliding into place. Through the glass of the elevator, the sky is brassy and blue. He starts to ask Maxence about his summer.  
  
“What?” he says. A hasty examination of his memory finds him either dancing or horizontal or dancing horizontally. Sun, water, J.F. “Oh,” he says, “the music fests. Yes. And you—”

But the elevator is too fast for him; the doors are opening and Axel is stepping nimbly through, shoulders squared, his face turned toward the rest of his evening, wherever it may take him.

|  |   
  
“Can we talk?” Maxence blurts. “Catch up, I mean?”

|  | 

“Can we talk?” Maxence asks, as they reach the lobby. “Catch up, I mean.”  
  
His mind supplies excuses. They haven’t seen each other since Pride, they’ll be filming together again soon, it’s not all that unreasonable…

|  |   
  
“Now?” Axel says. As he says it, his eyes flicker toward the street. The streets are no longer his; he’s lost them the same way he lost the stage and Twitter. He has to set limits now, Maxence knows, on his exposure to his devoted fans.  
  


|  | 

“Now?”

He doesn’t want to sound too eager; he glances at the street like he’s taking a moment to think about it. A strange pleasure overtakes him; he bites his lip to keep from grinning.  
  
“My place,” Maxence says. “I’ll even draw the curtains. Top secret. How about it?”

|  | 

“My place,” Maxence suggests. “How about it?”

His lip slides between his teeth as the grin breaks free.  
  
Axel grins at this. “Sure.” |  | 

“Sure,” he says. “Lead the way.”  
  
He holds himself rigid as he walks, as cautious as Orpheus should have been with his Eurydice; he can’t turn, he thinks, because Axel won’t be there and he’ll find himself staring at an empty sidewalk. But when he reaches his apartment, Axel is right there, hovering at his shoulder. His face is open and smiling, unsuspecting.

“I was a little worried, you know,” Axel says, following him up the stairs. “All the festivals. _Is he gonna be okay for filming_, I asked myself.”

“You saw my posts?”

“Of course. Every single one of them. The stories, too.”

The stories—the throbbing violet light, the girls. He fumbles at the lock, dry-mouthed, as one by one he remembers his song posts: those songs and their incriminating lyrics, the ones that would have laid his soul bare if anyone took the time to look them up.

“Stalker,” he says. The door squeals open. He makes himself laugh. “You never commented.”

“I didn’t know what to say,” Axel says, trailing him inside. “But it looked like fun. Biarritz especially. I…”

He really does mean to talk, to explain himself, but even before the door has closed completely behind them, he’s flattening Axel against it, finding Axel’s mouth, kissing away the bitten-off exclamation of surprise.

The violence of it surprises him too. He feels possessed, almost deranged. His hands are trembling the way they do when he lets himself get too hungry. He digs his fingers into Axel’s arms, presses his thigh between Axel’s legs and _feels _him, feels the reaction and the sharp little gasp of breath Axel takes, shuddering into his lungs.

The last time he kissed Axel like this, they were filming the sequence that would become Vendredi 19:25. They were lying down, then, and it didn’t matter that his legs were shaking. Now he isn’t sure he’ll be able to hold himself upright. He sags into Axel and prays and after a moment he feels Axel’s hands on his shoulders: automatic, muscle memory. Axel’s mouth parts under his.

When he draws back, Axel is staring at him with Lucas’ eyes, big and blue and wondering.

“Catch up, huh,” Axel murmurs.

“In a manner of speaking.” He takes Axel’s hands. “Come,” he says. Axel stumbles toward him, looking dazed.

He coaxes Axel into his bedroom, onto his bed, presses him down. He kisses Axel’s throat, dragging his collar out of the way and nuzzling Axel’s head to the side so he can get his lips on the mole, that damn mole, that has been taunting him for months. David told him not to pay attention to it, said it would be too much. _You’re making love, not pornography. _It’s been driving him crazy. He sucks, and Axel groans, and Maxence slides his hands along the edges of Axel’s shirt and under.

|  |   
|  | 

Twenty minutes later, he’s thinking frantically back to the gathering at France TV, the luncheon, ransacking his memory. They had a glass of wine each, that was all. Maxence was sober, clear-eyed. He’d been giddy with Coline, but he was always like that at ensemble meetings, excitable, like a large and exuberant dog.

There were no warning signs, he thinks, none whatsoever: nothing that would have told him that the moment Maxence’s apartment door closed, Maxence would throw him against it and begin to maul him.  
  
Axel’s pants are sleek, fancy, engineered joggers, ultra stretchy and low on his hips, concealing nothing. He licks his lips and plunges his hand past the waistband and gets his hand around Axel, burning hot.

Axel jerks beneath him as though he’s been electrocuted.

“Fuck,” he exclaims, and then he winces.

“Sorry—too rough?”

Axel nods, wide-eyed.

Maxence pulls his hand away and drools into it, a dangling silver string of spit. Axel is watching him, his eyes so large and dark, biting his lip. His mouth falls open when Maxence closes his hand around him again.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, as Axel jolts and squeezes his eyes shut and writhes beneath him, canting his hips and rubbing his cock against Maxence’s palm in small helpless movements. Maxence starts to babble, groaning as though Axel is already touching him. “God. You’re beautiful, you’re everything. I want you so much. God, you’re dripping. Listen. _Fuck. _Listen. Do you like my hand on you?”

“Gonna,” Axel moans. “I’m gonna—_ah, fuck_!”

He bucks against Maxence’s hand, teeth gritted, eyes screwed up tight, pulsing into Maxence’s fist. Maxence kisses him again and again and again as he caresses him, until Axel is crying out and hissing and pushing at him, begging, “Wait, stop, enough, it’s sensitive, _ah_, wait. Please!”

|  | 

  
  
  
  
  
No warning signs save the entire third season, he corrects himself, but it’s already too late: he’s flat on his back and Maxence’s hand is on him, _tight_, and Maxence is speaking to him, in a ragged, irresistible murmur that saturates the air like perfume or honey or rain, and suddenly he can’t seem to think at all.  
  
He sits back and almost sighs at the sight: Axel’s shirt is rucked up around his armpits, his pants around his thighs; his nipples are hard, his cock pink against his thigh and just beginning to soften.

Axel looks back, panting, red-cheeked, his hair in his eyes.

|  | When he opens his eyes, Maxence is gazing down at him, bright-eyed and flushed. He looks like a vision, like a Madonna in a museum, ornately framed, or a beautiful sculpture against a backdrop of yellow irises: the composer’s angel by the church of St. Clotilde, leaning over him with a smile, rosy and indistinct in the gold of the afternoon.  
  
“You’re beautiful,” Maxence repeats. He reaches over to brush the hair away with his clean hand and freezes as he hears the clink of his belt and feels Axel’s fingers trembling at his waistband. “Axel—”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


|  | 

“You’re beautiful,” Maxence says to him, Axel, with his red cheeks and drooling mouth and unfocused eyes, and Axel wants to laugh in his face, but he can’t find the words to protest or even joke.

All he knows is that it feels unfair to leave Maxence hanging, and that he doesn’t want to be unfair, and that it’s very hard to undo someone’s belt at this angle. He’s never done that before, he thinks, tugged at a man’s belt and pulled it open.

Maxence says his name like he’s trying not to, half-swallowed, the softest of sounds. Axel touches him, cups him in his hand and feels him, firm and hot beneath the silken slide of his underwear.  
  
“Oh,” Axel says, as he pulls Maxence free of his briefs. For a moment, Maxence looms over him on all fours, heavy and hard and practically vibrating with desire. Axel cups Maxence in his hand like he’s weighing him. He hesitates. “Do you need,” he says, and mimes spitting into his palm.

“No,” Maxence says, lying back, gulping, “no, it’s fine, but do something, please.”

|  |   
|  | 

He’s never done this before, either, he thinks, held another man like this, though he has felt Maxence pressed tight against him, rolling around on a bed in front of the crew, all of them swallowing back their words, too, maybe holding their breaths. It wasn’t like this then, not nearly so urgent. Maxence had been looking at him as Eliott, sweet and fond; his leg between Axel’s legs had been gentle and sinuous and dry, practically powdered. It had been different even when they were doused in paint, slippery with it; he’d been kissing Eliott then. But now—  
  
Axel begins to stroke him, experimentally; his grip is loose and feathery. Maxence wonders if this is how Axel touches himself, if he teases himself like this first. He imagines sitting behind Axel, his chest to Axel’s back, resting his chin on Axel’s shoulder as Axel gets himself off, shows Maxence exactly how he likes it.

He moans at the thought, deep in his throat.

Axel falters. “Sorry,” he says, “the angle is a little…”  
  
  
  


|  | 

Now Maxence is sweating, now he’s hard and heavy in Axel’s hand, and wet, too, slopping against Axel’s palm. There are no constraints: of clothing, of time, of hanging cameras, of twenty pairs of eyes on his naked shoulders, and Maxence is beneath Axel, beneath his fingers, all of him, open to him like a sunbather to the sky.

He feels like an explorer in a space helmet surveying an alien landscape—a smooth tawny expanse, the intricate patterns of moles echoing in his mind the dazzling bursts of infinite stars overhead. Years of training and study have prepared him for this mission, the exploration must be long and deep and thorough, scientific, but all the while he’s keenly aware that he’s running out of oxygen. And floating through his brain is another thought: if he takes another step forward, it could be his last; there will be no turning back.  
  
“Please,” he says, “please, please, _please_, God, don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

Axel inhales. His hand tightens; Maxence cries out.

|  | 

“Please,” Maxence says, thin and strained, “please, please, _please_, God, don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

Farewell, Axel thinks, farewell, Earth, and normalcy, and everything that has come before. It’s a new world now, all his; there’s no one in it but himself and Maxence and this bed.  
  
“Okay,” Axel says, low. “I’ll take care of you.”

|  | “Okay,” he says. “I’ll take care of you.”  
  
He strokes Maxence more firmly, a slight twisting motion that ends with a swipe of his thumb across the head. With a burst of frantic tenderness, Maxence realizes that Axel is copying him, that Axel has never done this before. He’s never done it before, but he’s doing it now for Maxence. He thinks of the other things Axel could do for him, with a little coaxing—spread his legs, get Maxence sloppy with lube, press his fingers inside Maxence and rub him until he’s sore and leaking. Push _himself_ inside until they are sealed together, joined.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


|  | 

He tightens his grip, and Maxence seems to like it; he gasps and thrashes and stares at Axel, his mouth dropping open. Then he squeezes his eyes shut and moans.

Axel has monologued before, soliloquized on stage, striding back and forth, but he’s at a loss now. He can’t match Maxence’s narration of filth. All he can do is keep moving his hand, fascinated by the ripple of Maxence beneath it, the tightening of his body, the tautness of his fingers as they dig into the covers, the sharp glint of light on his chin as he throws his head back and pants. The desperate little movements of his hips and the spreading of his legs, as though he wants more than just Axel’s fist.

All he has to do is crawl forward, Axel thinks, just a few centimeters, and Maxence will cry out and rub against him and try to take what he needs. He finds himself wishing it were that easy, that he could lean forward and sink into Maxence and make him happy, feel Maxence’s legs wrapping around him, Maxence’s hands clenching in his hair, urging him on.  
  
“Axel,” he gasps, “_Axel_,” and he’s coming, clenching, convulsing, shooting himself under the chin and across the chest.

|  | “Axel,” Maxence gasps.  
  
Axel’s hand shivers to a stop, spiderweb-light on his skin.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


|  | 

He freezes, wondering if he’s squeezed too hard, and then he gasps, too, as Maxence rears up and groans and comes across his own stomach and chest in twitching bursts.

He pulls his hand away and holds it curled in his lap, unsure what to do; it would be rude to wipe his palm on the sheets, surely, and ruder still to smear his hand across Maxence’s thigh. So he keeps it there between his legs, palm up, tingling and damp.

Maxence lets out a low, cracked chuckle.  
  
“Axel, God,” he says. Come drips down his neck and across the still-twitching muscles of his stomach. He can barely hear Axel over the ragged sound of his own breathing. “Sorry,” he says, and giggles. “That was fast. Ahh, I’m embarrassed. Don’t look at me.”

|  | 

“That was fast,” he says, and his teeth flash into a smile as he covers his eyes with both hands. “I’m embarrassed,” he says. “Don’t look at me.”

Axel looks; of course he looks: looks and looks and looks, at the pink flush on Maxence’s skin, the gleam of wetness across his stomach as he bends his knees and hides himself and curls up on his side. Was it fast? he thinks. The sun pouring in through the curtain shocks him. He can still feel the heat of Maxence in his palm.  
  
“You were pent up,” Axel says.

“Pent up,” he agrees.

|  | 

“You were pent up, maybe,” he croaks.

“Pent up,” Maxence repeats; he’s still grinning as he lifts his hands.  
  
“Glad I could…” Axel is staring at him, lips parted; he trails off as Maxence grins. The red flush is spreading, burning all the way down his throat and across his chest. He takes a deep gulp of air and starts over. “Glad I could be of service.”

|  | “Glad I could—” Maxence is looking at him through his lashes, looking at him and beaming, God! “—glad I could be of service.”  
  
  
  
“I’m grateful,” he says, and Axel smiles, tentative and shy.

|  | “Mm, I’m grateful,” Maxence says. He hauls Axel into his arms.  
  
Sleepiness is seeping into his body, settling over him as warm and heavy as a winter quilt. He thinks about sitting lonely on his rooftop, watching a shadow slide across the moon, about the messages left unsent; he can send them, now, and many more besides. There’s no moon tonight, but he can take Axel upstairs anyway, to look at the city.

|  | 

His brain flies through a catalogue of idiotic remarks. _You _should_ be grateful, I don’t do that for just anyone. Shall we go again? Then you can be doubly grateful._  
  
  
  
  
  
Before Axel can pull away, he rolls over and traps him in his arms. 

|  |   
  
“I love you,” he whispers.

|  | “I love you,” Maxence says.  
  
Axel’s only response is a brief, damp, clammy squeeze of his thigh.

|  | He opens his mouth, stiffens.  
|  | 

He can feel the sticky press of Maxence’s chest against his shoulder blades, the heat of his thighs, his breath, the softness of Maxence’s lips against his ear.

He realizes that all of this has happened, that even in this misty golden light of late afternoon, he can see the dust in the air and the flaking paint on the walls and hear the traffic outside, that they are alone; that no one is here to save him by shouting, _Cut_!

He realizes also that this silence is poison, that if he waits long enough, it won’t matter what he says. But he has to say it carefully.  
  
The silence stretches. He fills it.

|  |   
  
“Fuck,” he says, “sorry.”

“Maxence—”

|  | 

“Ah,” Maxence says, “fuck, sorry.”

“Maxence—”  
  
“Sorry. You don’t have to say anything. Don’t, in fact. Don’t worry about it. Sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

|  | “You don’t have to say anything,” Maxence murmurs. “Don’t, in fact. Don’t worry about it. Sorry, I shouldn’t have,” he says, and then his voice trails away; he’s asleep.  
  
He’s imagined how this would go: the post-coital murmuring, the stroking of hair, the kiss to the center of Axel’s forehead as fervent as a blessing. Instead, he falls asleep, still apologizing, so quickly it’s like fainting.

|  |   
|  | 

He turns the words over and over in his head as he wipes himself off, pulls his shirt back down, tugs his pants up. _I love you. I love you. _He takes it seriously, a declaration of this kind, has only said it to Charlie on momentous occasions, over a red bouquet, over a candlelit dinner, but Maxence has blurted it out just like that, soft and sleepy and empty-handed, and they’ve barely known each other a year. It feels irreverent, almost insulting.

He looks at Maxence’s face, smoothed in sleep, mouth parted. He watches the glitter of sweat drying across Maxence’s eyelids. The light loves him; his skin is glowing.

He’d be a liar if he said he’d never thought about it before, about taking Maxence into his arms and going further than they were ever allowed to go on set. He’d thought it would be sweet, fun, funny, even; they’d laugh as they discovered each other. He’d imagined that Maxence would kick him out afterward, amiably, push him from the bed, grin at him, send him on his way. And that would be that: an itch scratched, curiosity satisfied. A casual question, asked and answered. No big deal. No need to do it again.

Now he knows differently—knows the weight of Maxence, the velvet feel of him, the way he began to gasp toward the end, the hoarseness of his voice and how it curled like smoke into Axel’s ears and set him on fire.

_I love you._

They’ve practiced, he supposes. They’ve said it to each other back and forth across a table, on set, standing on the pavement before a fake bus stop. Maybe it just slipped out. Maybe it was Eliott talking; maybe, like Lucas, he was supposed to smile and say, _Me, too_. A missed cue.

Maxence shifts. His eyelids flutter.

He turns hastily to the door, rubs the sheets between his fingers, bites his lip, waits.  
  
When he wakes, Axel is already dressed. He’s sitting at the edge of the bed, staring at the door and looking somber.

Axel says, “I didn’t know. Truly, I…” Maxence watches the nervous movement of his fingers in the duvet: squeeze and release, squeeze and release. “I need some time. To think. I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you were hoping to hear.”

|  |   
|  | 

As soon as Maxence says his name, he knows: it wasn’t an accident; it wasn’t a whim. He can hear it in Maxence’s voice, the nervousness and the tension, as Maxence cuts through his stammering and tells him to go.  
  
“It’s okay,” Maxence says. Axel flinches, and he tries to lighten his voice, brighten it. It’s all a big joke and if Axel leaves now he won’t shatter. He’s rubber, he’s resilient. But the words are old and cracked by the time he forces them into open air. “Get out, then. Go think.”

|  | “It’s okay,” Maxence says, but he knows it isn’t.  
  
  
  
  
“Thanks. Sorry. Thanks.”

|  |   
|  | 

He shuts the door quietly, as though Maxence is still asleep.  
  
The bed shifts and the door shuts and he lies there and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees static.

|  |   
|  | 

Afterward, he stands on the sidewalk as the day tilts into dusk and watches the people of Paris going about their perfectly normal lives, happy, ignorant, with no inkling that he, Axel, is standing on the ceiling, that with a hand on his cock and two little words Maxence has taken his world and turned it upside-down.

He wants to go back in time, go back an hour, even ten minutes.

I should have kissed him, he thinks, I should have occupied his mouth, I shouldn’t have let him speak at all.  
  
When he can speak again, he calls his sister. “I’ve blown it up,” he says. The lightheartedness has taken, finally: he’s his old bouncy self, and he sounds almost gleeful. He could be delivering good news. _I have a new project. I have a new shoot. Guess what, I’m getting dinner with Axel. _“Everything. The show. My career.”

“Oh, Maxou,” she says. “Where are you?”

|  |   
  
“Paris,” he says. He hears a rustle and some muffled conversation, with her partner, maybe, or their mother. He screws up his face and tries not to cry.

Agathe brings her phone back to her ear. “Come home,” she says. “Just tell me when you’re getting in, and leave your phone in Paris. Charles and I will meet you at the station.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can, and you will,” she says. “Tell Elisabeth where she can find you—give her the landline—and tell her you’ll be back in two weeks. Or three.” She lowers her voice. “How bad is it? Did you lose your part?”

He can’t imagine Axel running to David over this. But he doesn’t know how they can ever work together again, now that he knows—now that Axel knows—what it’s like to have his hands on Axel, to touch him—_really_ touch him. He’ll never be able to forget it. Even when he’s fifty, he’ll remember it, that first burning drag of his fingers over Axel’s naked hip.

“Oh, God!” he says. “God, I’m an idiot, I’m so stupid.”

“Maxence,” she says, hushed, “what did you _do_?”

“Axel,” he whispers. “I slept with Axel.”

She swears. “Oh my God, Maxence. Wait, but wait, doesn’t this mean—”

“Fuck. I can’t talk about it anymore. Sorry. I can’t. I’ll come tomorrow. In the afternoon. I’ll be there. I’ll text you.”

|  | 

He imagines Maxence somewhere above him. Maybe Maxence has pulled on a pair of sweatpants and climbed the stairs and is now watching him from the rooftop.

His ears burn. He hurries to the metro, down into the humid darkness.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
|  | 

At his mother’s, he can’t eat; he shreds bits of chicken between his fingers and feeds them to Ouba beneath the table.

“You’re quiet, _chéri_,” his mother says. “Is something wrong?”

“Just tired,” he says, “it’s a lot of travel, shuttling back and forth like this,” and then he sets down his fork and says, “_Maman_, I think…I think Maxence is in love with me.”

The words hang in front of him. He imagines them succumbing to gravity, hitting his plate one by one: plink, plink. He can’t take them back now, he thinks; he can’t pick them up and swallow them away. He doesn't really want to, either.

He can feel his mother’s eyes on him, her silence. Ouba licks his fingertips.

“That’s all,” he says. “Are you surprised?”

“Not at all, no,” she says. “But what about Charlie?”

“What do you mean, what about Charlie?”

“Does she know?”

“Why would she…why should I…”

His mother’s gaze drops pointedly to his throat, and he doesn’t have to get up to look in a mirror, he doesn’t even have to wonder: he knows there must be a mark, a red aureole around his mole, peeping out beneath the rumpled edge of his collar. He thought he was going to come then and there when Maxence sucked on it, that he was going to die, that gray matter would trickle from his ears.

“I,” he stammers. “I wasn’t thinking, I made a mistake.”

“You have to treat people the way you want to be treated,” his mother says sternly. “Okay, Axel? That’s all I’ll say about it.”

But later, as he finishes rinsing the dishes, she joins him in the kitchen and pats his cheek the way she used to when he was little.

The gesture is small and infinitely tender. Tears spring to his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t want you to think badly of me.”

She embraces him. “I love you,” she says. “Whatever you decide. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

He falls asleep expecting to feel better in the morning, but on waking he feels it, the clench of anxiety in his stomach. He walks with Ouba, eats a mouthful of breakfast, kisses his mother goodbye.  
  
  
  
  
  


|  | 

He goes for a stroll with Charlie after dark, when he’s less likely to be recognized, sweating under the high collar of his button-down shirt. They find a sound stage by the Canal de l'Ourcq and sway side by side.

He’d post something about it normally, a video or a picture, but he doesn’t take any this time, not even for himself. They made their plans late in the day, and he’d hoped the sight of her would be clarifying in some way, that he would take her hand in his and feel either reverent or repulsed, and that would be his answer, but he feels nothing: the evening is pleasant and unremarkable. When Charlie dances he only has eyes for her, and when they walk arm in arm along the water, he looks up at the lights in the windows of Paris and wonders what Maxence is doing.  
  
In Senlis, he walks in the forest and stares at the old Roman walls and plays board games with Agathe and Charles and Charles’ sprawling family: three siblings, five cousins, two first cousins once removed. He signs one autograph and takes a picture with a fan who just happened to be visiting from Paris. It makes its way onto Twitter, and he wonders if Axel sees it, imagines coming home to find Axel in the kitchen with his mother, chatting away over tea and madeleines. |  | 

He meets David a few days later to talk over some details of the coming seasons, six and seven—especially seven. There is melodrama planned, David tells him, tears and shouting. A manic episode triggered by the stress of change.

“Of course I invited Maxence to be here as well, to discuss,” David tells him, and his heart lurches and he half-turns in his seat, expecting Maxence to be standing behind him, “but we can do that another time.”

“About Maxence,” he says, and stops, and starts again, and stops again.

“Yes?” David says.

“If, say, he and I were to…if we were to…”

David nods encouragingly.

“If we were…together,” he says, feeling sick. He runs his hand over the printout where Niels has typed out a whole catalogue of sadistic ideas: hospitalization, infidelity. “Would that be a problem?”

When he looks up, David is smiling at him.

“Axel,” David says, “what you do in your private life is no concern of mine. Did I tell Marilyn and Michel they couldn’t be together? Of course not. Of course not. I donned my little Cupid’s wings, in fact.” He mimes the release of a tiny arrow. “I know already your commitment, your love for Lucas. I know you’ll be careful. Your professionalism is not in question. If it’s my blessing you need, then you have it, with all my heart. You can tell Maxence that too.”

As though Maxence is waiting for him at home, biting his nails, pacing back and forth as he waits for the text, the all clear: _David says it’s okay._

“No, no, no,” he says. “No, I was just…I mean…we aren’t, though. Together.”

David stares at him. “Oh, dear,” he says. “I’ve put my foot in my mouth. I see. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“No, I should have been more clear, I…”

David says, “It happens all the time, you know…people fall in love on set, they become their characters. And you two especially, you inhabit your characters. If we hadn’t been renewed, I’d say…” He stops, finds his glass of water, and sips. “No. No, I can’t tell you what to do one way or the other, _mon petit_. Just take it slow, that’s my advice to you. And if things become uncomfortable, tell me. We’ll find a way to make it work. Life happens,” he says. “Life always happens. And we adapt. We’re in the business, we know how to adapt. You’re my stars, both of you. We’ll make it work.”

The meeting fizzles after that; Axel is blushing, he can tell, and David keeps setting the script aside to offer hearty reassurances.

“I feel responsible, you see,” he says, as he escorts Axel to the door, “I brought you two together, after all.”

He starts to text Maxence about it in the metro—_Guess what, David thought we were already dating_—_Guess what, David’s cast himself as Cupid!_—then thinks better of it. He asked Maxence for time, and Maxence is giving it to him, and he should take what he is given and think—really think—about what he wants.

No matter how he tries to examine the problem, he keeps circling back to those words. _I love you. _Maybe Maxence _was _drunk, he thinks. Maybe he was stoned. Maybe he got caught up in the moment, in post-orgasmic euphoria, said something he didn’t mean.

He tries to read and finds himself daydreaming instead, about that afternoon in the golden quiet of Maxence’s room, about the softness of Maxence’s mouth on his, the taste of him. He can’t look anyone in the eye anymore, not Charlie, not his mother. An email from David and Niels goes unopened. He keeps his phone on silent or forgets it at home, and his voicemails pile up.  
  
He brings his phone after all, but the only messages he gets that week are some texts from J.F., asking if he’ll have time to go to Outlook in September, and an email from Elisabeth, forwarding a script from David and Niels. |  |   
  
“You see, it’s fine!” Agathe says.

“He hasn’t contacted me,” Maxence says.

“Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” she says. “I bet he’s breaking up with her. Coming clean with his mother. Telling his agent, maybe. Settling his accounts.”

|  | 

  
  
  
  
  
Eventually, he makes himself go through them, deleting or addressing them one by one. There are two from David, and one from his mother, and all the rest are from his agent, about interview requests, upcoming projects. _You’re in demand_, she says. He hacks his way to the present. Delete, save, delete.  
  
He doesn’t like how she puts it, _settling his accounts_, like Maxence is a death sentence, like Axel is girding himself for a battle he doesn’t expect to survive. He gets wasted that night with Charles’ brothers and calls, but Axel doesn’t pick up, and Armand, who’s only had a sip, grabs his phone before he can get out much more than _Axellllll_.

“You’ll thank me in the morning,” Armand says gravely, holding the phone at arm’s length while Maxence whines at him and Charles laughs hysterically.

|  | 

  
“Axellll,” Maxence says, and his heart flings itself into his throat and falls down again, quivering. “I,” Maxence says, and then he exclaims in wordless protest. _You’ll thank me_, another voice says, deep and amused, _in the_—  
  
|  | 

“End of final message,” his phone says. “You have no new—”

“Fuck,” he says.

He plays the message over and over, as many times as he can stand it. _Axel_, Maxence says, _Axel, Axel, I, Axel, I—_

_I _what, part of him cries, and he wonders where Maxence is, what festival, who took the phone from him, whose voice was so knowing and gentle in the background. But Maxence’s Instagram still shows him sitting happily atop a hay bale in Calvi.

He finds Maxence in his contacts. He stares at the picture of Eliott saved there, tousle-haired and beaming: the face of a stranger.

Sleep on it, he tells himself. Wait a day.  
  
In the morning, before he can thank anyone, Axel calls.

|  | 

He hits _Call_.  
  
The buzzing wakes him. Groggily, he unseals his face from the pillow, swipes at the dried saliva trailing down his chin, and answers without looking.

|  | For a moment he thinks he’ll be ferried straight to voicemail. Then—  
  
“Hello?”

|  | “Hello?”  
|  | 

He shivers at the sound of Maxence’s voice, sleep-rough and slow.  
  
“Hi,” Axel says. His voice is quiet, and Maxence fumbles at the volume button and wonders if he’s dreaming. “Are you free today? Can we meet?”

His hand starts to shake.

|  | 

“Hi,” he says, tentative. “Are you free today? Can we meet?”  
  
  
  
  
“I’m in Senlis,” he says. “Visiting my sister,” he says, and adds, wildly, “Boy troubles. I mean she’s having…I mean…”

|  | “I’m in Senlis,” Maxence says.  
|  | 

He can feel the sweat trapped between his cheek and the screen. Maxence doesn’t sound happy to hear from him; he’s rambling on about his sister now. _Senlis,_ he thinks._ Your sister,_ he thinks. I_ thought you said you loved me. _  
  
“When you’re back, then,” Axel says, with the same quiet certainty.

|  | “When you’re back, then.”  
  
_I’m never coming back_, Maxence thinks. _I am going to get my old job at the bank back, that’s what I’m going to do, counting money and depositing checks and opening accounts, _opening_ them, not settling them. And smiling at old women. I will live and die here in Senlis; I will be buried with my ancestors and the ancient Franks, and white flowers will bloom over us, along the Roman walls._

|  |   
  
“I don’t know when…”

|  | “I don’t know when that’ll be,” Maxence says.  
|  | 

There’s a finality to his tone, like an iron gate swinging shut, a rigidity that suggests he’s planning to spend the rest of his life there, Axel be damned.  
  
“Please,” Axel says. “I don’t want to do this over the phone.”  
  


|  | “Please,” Axel says. He misses Maxence’s smile. Suddenly, he’s turned on; he wants to be touched. He presses his fingertips into his forearm as hard as he can. “I don’t want to do this over the phone.”  
  
He stares at the cracked plaster of the ceiling and tells Axel he’ll be in Paris on Monday.

|  | 

“Monday,” Maxence says, after a pause.

“Monday,” Axel repeats, “okay, I’ll text you,” but Maxence has already hung up.  
  
After that, it's a blur. He doesn't know what he tells Agathe, but he remembers the pressure of her fingers as she squeezes his hand. _You should have told him Tuesday_, she says. _Our lucky day. _They go wading in the Nonette, squishing their toes into the mud, going in as deep as their chests. Heavy summer boughs hang over the water, turning the world green. He swims, splashes Agathe, counts fish.

|  | Afterward, it’s agony: he paces around his room like an angry cat; he digs his fingernails into his palms, runs his hands through his hair, rolls around on his bed. He looks up tickets to Senlis. He could be there in two hours, he thinks, and then he stands paralyzed in the corner by his bookshelf and tells himself not to be an idiot. He doesn’t know where Maxence is staying. He doesn’t know anything.  
  
By Friday, he can’t stand it anymore, the peaceful green and white bowl of his hometown. He returns to Paris early and spends the weekend lying low, literally lying low, flat on his belly in his apartment, reading and rereading his lines.

He doesn’t have too many. Mostly directions: Eliott enters here, Eliott leaves there, Eliott puts his arm around Lucas here, kisses Lucas there.

_And what is the point_, a frightened part of him cries in shrill anguish, _what is the point, when you’re about to lose your role anyway?_

|  | 

The rest of the week passes slowly. He regrets booking this holiday, these few weeks off. He wishes he could launch himself headlong into the performances and photoshoots, all scheduled to start at the end of the month. Anything to stop thinking. He has a long conversation with Charlie on Friday, two hours and thirty-six minutes according to his phone. She's in Ibiza with her family, and there's a swimming pool, and that's all he remembers.

"Is something wrong?" she asks, when the silence has stretched on too long. "Axel?"

It takes him a minute to answer. He blames the connection. He blames the heat. He says hello to her parents, guiltily, boisterously, and then he says goodbye.  
  
J.F., back from Lisbon, tries to draw Maxence out for drinks.

“Come on,” he says, cajoling. “Your tan is going to fade away, Lord Voldemort.” Then he holds his phone away from his ear and makes everyone on the rooftop shout Maxence’s name. “You see, they’re all clamoring for you.”

“I can’t, I’m sorry,” he says.

“Oh?” J.F. says, in mild surprise. The noise drains away in the background. “I went into the stairwell,” J.F. explains. “Are you cutting back? That’s good, Maxence. Sorry, I didn’t mean to tempt you. If it’s a resolution, I support it. Okay?”

“It’s not that,” he says. He tugs at his lower lip with his fingers. “It’s not…”

Food, drink, sleep: all the basic functions of survival have lost their appeal. All he seems able to do is smoke, repeatedly, nervously, and even the pleasure of that, of the click of the lighter and the little burst of flame, the act of cradling the light in his hands, shielding it, watching it take hold, and the first warm inhalation, even that pleasure has dimmed. It’s just something to do, something to fill the growing hollow in his body. It’s Sunday. In twenty-four hours, Axel will turn him into a pile of ash.

He doesn’t say this to J.F., of course. He mumbles about the start of filming.

“Well, text me if you’re free,” J.F. says. “Remember that time we walked along the Rhône? You know we’re both capable of doing many things besides drinking.”

“Oh, really?” he says, and J.F. laughs and hangs up.

The night passes slowly. He spends part of it staring at himself in the mirror.

It’s hard to see Eliott in his face now, even now that his hair is longer. It’s grown in lighter than expected, fluffy in the heat.

He tiptoes up to the roof and rolls and smokes three cigarettes, one after another, watching the lights of the Eiffel Tower through the smoke and making all kinds of plans: he’ll break the lease on the apartment, he’ll find a place in Senlis, crash on his sister’s couch, ask J.F. to take him far away…

|  | 

On Sunday, he texts Maxence a place and a time and a question mark. He sees that the message is read several hours before Maxence responds with a single word: _dac._ _OK._  
  
At 11:01 the next morning, he slips into a café not far from the Place Monge station, nestled between two dueling music bars. He wonders why Axel has chosen this location; then he recognizes the dim red interior of the piano bar, now shuttered—the backdrop of a movie where Axel played a drummer in a lycée band.

|  | 

He arrives at their meeting place early, ignoring the sourness of his stomach and the nervousness that is making his palms sweat. School is a month from starting and the area around the Sorbonne campus is still dead: the only other person in Jozi Café is a woman bent over her laptop, a professor or a graduate student, perhaps, and she doesn’t spare him a second glance.

He’s been going to Jozi since filming wrapped on _Jamais contente_, and the staff know him; they were kind to him, to the skinny, hyperactive kid filming his first big role in a movie. The proprietor made him his first flat white and taught him how to slurp his coffee, to taste the notes of fruit or chocolate. He knows Léna still comes back from time to time, too, but she’s in Marseille for the summer; there will be no chance of an encounter.

It’s going to be okay, he thinks. The stage is set. He’s ready. He has the whole staff of Jozi Café on his side, and David, too, and his mother. He’ll tell Maxence the truth: that he doesn’t have an answer, but he wants to do the right thing. He wants to take it slow. They’ll sit down and puzzle it out together.  
  
He sees Axel right away, sitting in the corner with his back to the wall, jiggling one leg, his fingertips perched on the porcelain shell of a cup, hunched over his drink like an old woman and staring into its white depths as though the foam will part and show him the future. When he looks up and notices Maxence hesitating by the door, he startles; he swipes the back of one hand hastily over his lip, once, twice, and then he sits up straight.

|  | 

With bossa nova playing softly overhead, he sits above his cappuccino and rehearses his speech, but the moment the bell jingles, and he sees Maxence standing there, it all flies out of his head.  
  
|  | 

Maxence is wearing a cream-colored shirt printed with botanicals: green leaves and deep red flowers. His hair is sun-bleached, a cap of gold. He’s more tanned than ever, and he seems thinner, too, almost wiry. Axel watches the pattern of light across the bones of his wrist as he reaches for the back of his chair.  
  
“What’ll you have?” he says, without preamble.

“Nothing, I’m fine, thank you,” Maxence says.

“I insist.”

“Really—”

|  | “What’ll you have?” he blurts, trying to stall him. He knows, somehow, that when the meeting is over, the sight of Maxence’s back as he departs will be painful.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“A cappuccino,” Axel says. “They can make it with skimmed milk. A café au lait? An espresso?”

|  | He wants to drag things out. He wants Maxence to look at him and keep looking at him. “A cappuccino? Café au lait, espresso?”  
  
|  | 

_Anything_, he thinks, looking at Maxence, searching, trying to read his expression, _you can have anything you want._  
  
He orders a tea, herbal, as floral as the shirt he is wearing. When he brings it back to the table, he doesn’t drink it, just turns it around and around with the tips of his fingers. He can see Axel’s hands out of the corner of his eye, laid flat on the table, loose and relaxed with the morning light shining gold through the filaments of hair on his knuckles and wrists. |  | 

Eventually, Maxence selects a tea. Axel watches him wait for it at the counter, watches him scratch at his ankle with his heavy black shoe. When the barista hands him his drink, he doesn’t smile. Cool and expressionless, he brings it back to the table, so smoothly he seems to be gliding, and then he doesn’t drink it; he sits across from Axel and stares at his hands.  
  
“My mother says she isn’t surprised at all,” Axel says, and Maxence looks up. |  | 

He doesn’t know what to say, but he has to say something. He can’t let that poisonous silence come between them a second time. He finds himself talking about his mother, thinking about the warmth of her hand on his cheek.  
  
Axel is looking at him, grinning, a fixed nervous grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

|  | Maxence meets his eyes briefly before looking down again.  
  
His stomach lurches. _Oh, God_, he thinks. _Oh fuck._

He doesn’t speak; he can’t.

|  |   
  
Axel hurries on. “And David, I met up with David last week and asked him…I asked if it would be a problem, for the filming, and he looked at me in complete amazement and said—can you believe this—he said he thought we were already, you know, together.”

|  | 

Something swoops in his stomach. Desperately, he tells Maxence about the meeting with David and David-as-Cupid, winged and benevolent. He paints a hilarious picture. But Maxence doesn’t laugh; he doesn’t even smile.  
  
“And is it?” he asks, thin and crackling.

“Is what?” Axel looks at him.

His eyes are so large, Maxence thinks.

|  |   
  
“Is it going to be a problem?”

“What, is what—”

“What I said,” he says. Every word hurts as he pushes them out through a mouth that feels swollen. “What we _did._”

|  | 

“Is it going to be a problem?” Maxence asks.

“What?” he says, blinking. "Is what going to be..."

Maxence repeats himself, short and clipped. “What I said. What we did.”  
  
“But Maxence, you didn’t mean it, did you?” Axel says. He finds his paper napkin and starts to tear at it, picking it into little shreds. He stammers. “You can’t possibly have _meant_—I mean—Maxence, it’s so hard to _know_. What’s you and what’s acting. You know? If the show were finished, that would be one thing, but it isn’t, we—we—we’re still—”

|  | “But Maxence,” Axel says, thinking about Senlis, about the stranger’s mild laughter in his voicemail, about the parade of girls and concerts and Maxence’s reluctance to return to Paris, “you didn’t mean it, did you?” And he repeats David’s words about people falling in love on set, more to himself than anything, trying on David’s heartiness on for size, trying to bolster himself.  
|  | 

Close up, he can see how blank Maxence looks. He’s bored, Axel thinks, still babbling; he doesn’t want to be here, he’s…

All of a sudden, Maxence is on his feet, not shouting, but not speaking quietly, either. Every word is vicious and brittle, cracking across Axel’s ears like a whip.  
  
“Then why did you let me?” he says, tight, quiet. He stands, scraping his chair over the wooden floor. “Method acting? Just getting in the mood for season five? Fuck. They don’t teach that at the Facto. You _let _me, you didn’t say a word—”

|  | “Fuck,” he says. “You let me do it. You let me, you didn’t say a word.”  
|  | 

As Axel gapes at him, Maxence shifts backward, and the light from the window glitters in his eyes, and abruptly Axel understands that what he took for blankness was in fact blank terror, that all along Maxence has been on the verge of tears.

The realization grabs him by the throat and shakes him.  
  
“Wait,” Axel says. His cup rattles on the table. A leg of his chair snags in a seam between planks, and he struggles with it, struggles to rise. “Wait, please. I let you because—I went along with it because you were so—I didn’t think about it, I just…Maxence, you’re beautiful, you could have anyone, I never thought…I couldn’t believe…”

|  | 

“Wait,” he gasps. “Wait, please.”

He doesn't even know what he says next, a wild, horrified eruption, the scattered remnants of his carefully planned explanation, so desperate to speak that he starts to stutter. But Maxence is already turning away.  
  
|  | 

Axel rises to intercept him, but his chair snags on the floor. He wrestles free, cursing the uneven planks and the forest they came from. Maxence crosses the café, moving faster and faster. He doesn’t look back. He yanks the door open and melts into the glare.  
  
The sunlight outside cuts him like a knife; pain sparkles at the corners of his eyes. The café door jingles as it shuts, and he turns and starts to walk, blindly, in some direction that will take him to the metro, or the Seine, or a chasm deep in the earth.

|  | 

The bell tinkles. Axel stares into the empty space left behind and tries to breathe.

He knows now; he knows his answer. If Maxence leaves him, if he lets Maxence leave him, he’s going to die.  
  
He breathes through his mouth, slow measured breaths, digging his fingernails into his palms: walk, breathe, walk, another step, another breath, good, keep it together, keep your face neutral, relax your muscles, everything is fine.

The door jingles again behind him.

|  |   
  
“Maxence,” Axel shouts.

|  | “Maxence!”  
  
He takes off running; he doesn’t know what else to do.  
  


|  | 

The light blinds him as he bursts onto the sidewalk. Maxence starts to run, a dark shape flitting along the pavement, and Axel chases him; he doesn’t know what else to do.  
  
Axel catches him in seconds. He closes his hand around Maxence’s elbow and spins him around, and Maxence stares down at him with his lip wobbling out of control. He blinks and blinks, trying to clear his vision, but the world remains blurry, and now his cheeks are wet. |  | 

It’s like a nightmare: the distance between himself and Maxence is stretching; the ground is sinking and warping beneath him. He throws himself forward into the brilliant blue afternoon and catches Maxence by the arm and pulls, and then Maxence is looking down at him, his mouth trembling, his face wet, and Axel is going to die anyway, right here on this sidewalk, of shame.  
  
“Oh fucking fuck,” Axel says. “Oh no. Oh don't. Shit. I’m sorry. I said everything wrong.”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I—don’t look at me. Go away.”

“I’m not going to go away,” Axel says, “you’re upset, I’ve upset you.”

|  | 

“Oh, fucking fuck,” he says, “oh, no. Oh, don’t. _Shit_. I’m sorry, I said everything wrong.”

“Go away,” Maxence says.

“I’m not going to go away,” he says. “You’re upset—I’ve upset you.”  
  
He rubs angrily at his eyelids. “Well, there’s nothing you can do,” he says. “We’re stuck. Everything is ruined. I’ll tell David I can’t do it anymore. I’ll drop out. Go away, _please_ go away, I’m begging you.”

|  | 

  
“There’s nothing you can do,” Maxence says. He wipes his eyes and drags in a deep, shaky breath, and Axel wonders if he should go to his knees. “We’re stuck. Everything is ruined. I’ll tell David I can’t do it anymore, I’ll drop out. Go away. Please go away. I’m begging you.”  
  
He starts to turn away. Axel grabs his hand and pulls him back.

“People are staring,” he tries.

|  | 

He turns. With a panicked lurch, Axel grabs at his hand and seizes it.

“People are staring,” Maxence snaps.  
  
“There’s no one here,” Axel says. “Maxence, look at me. Hey. _Maxence_.”

|  | 

“There’s no one here,” Axel says, but he doesn’t know; he hasn’t checked. There could be a crowd standing there with cameras for all he cares, an entire convention center’s worth of people.

Every last one of them can go to hell. But Maxence has to look at him.

“Maxence,” he says, “hey. Maxence!”  
  
He looks.

|  | Slowly, Maxence lifts his head. His lips are pressed tightly together. His eyes are brimming with tears.  
  
Axel is gazing at him, flushed, bright-eyed. His hair is standing straight up, blown out of its careless arrangement. His face gleams with sweat. He sprinted from the café, Maxence realizes, he ran for dear life.

He’s going to start crying again: he can feel the sting building.

|  |   
  
“You love me that much,” Axel says. “Enough to give up your place on the show.”

“Idiot,” he bursts out. “It’s self-preservation. How can I possibly become Eliott again when I can’t even bear to—”

|  | 

He’s going to lose his mind. “You love me that much,” he says, stupidly, and Maxence calls him an idiot and tries to pull away.  
  
  
  
  
“No, wait, just listen, please.” Axel clears his throat. “After we—that day—I really thought about it. I said to myself, maybe he was drunk, maybe he was stoned, there’s no way he could have been serious. Sex feels _good_, you get wrapped up in it, you say things…”

"Let me go. Please let go." He has to get out of this awful sunlight, he has to get inside, crawl into a dark place, disappear. "_Axel please_."

“But then,” Axel says, holding on tighter, “then I thought, okay, let’s say he was high, let’s say it didn’t mean anything. And I didn’t like how that felt. I hated it, in fact.”

He rubs his thumbs through the sweat pooling on Maxence’s left palm.

“I don’t know what it is you see in me, I don't understand,” he says. He's talking fast, stumbling over his words. "You’re right, I’m an idiot…I’m stupid and selfish and I have bad habits, I hide them well but they’re there, and you’ll probably regret telling me, you’ll probably regret all of this…”

His pupils are pinpoints in a sea of blue under the vicious light; he's squinting, straining, his eyes watering with the effort not to blink.

“You were suffering," he says. "I realize that now. You were unhappy because of me…I'm sorry. That's the last thing I want. It's the last thing I want, for you to be unhappy. For you to—to cry. I don't want that. You know I don't want that. And _I_ know—" his voice cracks "—_I _know it’s not fair to ask you to hang around. I know it's not kind. But I…but I…”

His heart is beating frantically in his chest; his throat is so tight it aches.

|  | He doesn’t let go. He can’t. He has to keep Maxence tethered to him. He has to make Maxence understand. He tells Maxence everything, every thought, every fear, squeezing his hand like a clamp. Maxence tries to interrupt, tries to leave, and then he stops, and then he listens. Finally, Axel’s words run out; his story ends, and he trails off, and he waits.  
  
“But you want to try,” he says. "Is that right?"

|  | “You want to try,” Maxence says. “Is that it?”  
  
He can feel it in the grip Axel has on his hand, the sweat drying on his face. 

|  |   
|  | 

He apologizes again and again in a helpless rush.

He thinks of Charlie dancing by the Canal de l'Ourcq. The memory is already hazy, as softly drawn in his mind as _The Boulevard Montmartre at Night_, black water and golden hair dissolving into dabs and dots.

He can’t see what lies ahead, where he will land, how far the current will take him. But he can feel Maxence’s hand, sticky with sweat, tensing and flexing under the repeated nervous circling of his fingers.  
  
“I'm sorry,” Axel says. “I’m sorry. It’s selfish. I know it’s selfish. Forgive me. Be patient with me.”

|  | “Forgive me,” he begs. “Be patient with me.”  
  
“Can I—”

He hesitates and touches his own lips, tasting the salt on his fingers.

|  | 

Maxence touches his own lips and asks a question.  
  
  
  
  
|  | 

His heart leaps.  
  
Axel whispers, “Yes.” And as Maxence bends toward him, he closes his eyes.

Maxence brushes his thumb across Axel’s cheek. There’s a blush glowing there, under his tan. The sunlight glitters on him, on his upturned face. His mouth is soft, open, milky-sweet.  
  
  


|  | 

And he answers: “Yes.”

And he closes his eyes.

And gently, Maxence cups his cheek, and soundlessly, Maxence kisses him—kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, until he is submerged.  
  
The rush of blood in Maxence’s ears is like the roar of the sea.

He feels the changing shape of Axel’s mouth as Axel stands on his toes, leans in, kisses him back.

|  |   
|  | 


End file.
